The Most Kiwi Candies Money Can Buy
Just a Thursday night with five Americans trying traditional Kiwi lollies (as I wrote before, all candy are lollies, not just hard candy).
We tried to stick to short reviews, rather than mere star ratings. The foreignness of some of these flavors and textures needed a more expressive rating system.
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| Blue Volcanoes - Great name, terrible lolly. |
Carnuba wax. Too chewy, tough and calloused. Sweet?
Brennan said it tasted of yeast, with a finish of public pool.
Possibly the worst of the lot, an inauspicious beginning to the flavor journey.
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| Green Apple and Raspberry Sherbert Fizz |
Generally enjoyable - good and tart. Malic acid for the win.
My flatmate Meg gave me this helpful recipe for "sherbert powder"
https://www.chelsea.co.nz/recipes/browse-recipes/yummy-sherbet
- 1 tsp citric acid
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 Cup Chelsea Icing Sugar
- 1 tsp jelly crystals (any flavour you prefer)
Basically the same ingredients as Dip'n'Stick except the baking soda + citric acid combo makes it fizz as soon as you add water (aka, put it in your greedy little beak to gobble it up). She grew up being able to run down to the dairy (corner store) and buy whole 1 kg bags of sherbert powder. Arming little kids with sugar seems like a bad idea until you consider that they were running around with bags of unlabeled white powder which is a hilariously bad idea.
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| Irish Moss |
Plump menthol, flavored with 122, 123, 102.
Surprisingly pleasant texture. I like?
I guess I'm old now.
My mouth feels so clean.
(Realization dawns).
Oh no, they taste like Dr. Bronner's Eucalyptus castile soap.
Watch out! We are heading towards lumps territory!
Pascall's Orange Lumps
Charleston Chew texture -- not bad, if you like that kind of thing.
Decent Terry's chocolate orange flavor.
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| Pascall's Pineapple Lumps (Extremely Kiwi) |
Jeff threw his on the table in disgust. No words of review.
Canned fruit medley plus calloused marshmallow.
Nobody enjoyed this, especially after the pleasant flavor of the orange and chocolate combo.
Mini marshmallows - multicolored.
These were a relief, they just tasted so boring and just like American marshmallows.
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| Sour Feijoa |
Kind of tough, as a gummy, maybe I'll eat this like a hard candy. Viscous if it sits in your mouth, the outside creates a coating like a little chia seed or hagfish when startled. Texture is objectionable. Really good, proper tart+dusty feijoa flavor, accurate.
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| Smokers. These also come in a smaller form which, of course, are known as Lil Smokers. Sounds like candy produced in Kentucky up until the candy cigarettes crackdown of the mid-90s. |
Visually these are wee pink pearls. Flavorwise there are steps to the flavor experience.
Mint? No...
Ugh. Cleaner solution.
Simple Green!
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| Fizzies - SweetTarts waking up from a nap. |
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| Chocolate covered fish - peppermint version. See: Kiwi slang "I deserve a chocolate fish" when someone feels they need a reward for good behavior, deed, or hard work that may have gone unnoticed. |
Timtams are actually pretty broadly available in the US now, but do you know how to TimTam slam? Bite off the ends of the cookie, dunk into some tasty fluid, attach your mouth to the end not submerged and suck. It has a bit of the dangerous fragility of eating a very soggy graham crackers. You have to messily stuff the rest of the cookie in your gob before it drips all over your chin.
Favorite Slam combinations of the evening were: White chocolate + turmeric tea and white chocolate and whiskey. As a loather of white chocolate I cannot endorse these recommendations, they were touted by other participants.
I misheard someone reading off the available TimTam flavors and thought for a moment one was "Lamb and mint," alas no.
Chocolate covered licorice whips
These resemble sheep droppings, kind of a little greeny-brown licorice wrapped in chocolate so mild it should barely be called chocolate. The licorice also didn't have much flavor, just texture.
Pearse cried out in delight "It's giving fig?!"
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| Pascal Party Pack |
Planes - surprisingly good. The right kind of soft for a gummy candy, not abhorrently hard.
Worms - just worms.
Dots - boring.
Bananas - Why?! The worst of all artificial banana worlds.
Explorers (aka Emos) used to be called Eskimos, but have been rebranded--this, in a country where the word "gypsy" is casually used and seems to have consciousness of any negative connotations. There is something very eerie about their bodies, the faces haphazardly stamped, the bubbled highlighting the imperfection of these lollies as though they were artisinal glassware.
Almost circus peanut-like. They almost have a flavor. These are awful.
Misery candy.
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| Lollycake |
You slice and dice explorers, smash a bunch of malt biscuits, and then glue it all together with condensed milk. Yes, your teeth should be aching right about now. This is probably the worst thing I have eaten in all of New Zealand. The texture is bad, the malt + ghost of a hint of what once was a flavor aspect of the lollies. It even feels like a lie because it looks like chocolate but isn't chocolate.
For something that looks like pastel cobblestones it has a magical aesthetic, and unmagical taste.
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